


Bangsian

by toesohnoes



Category: Lost
Genre: Afterlife, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-10
Updated: 2006-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:35:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toesohnoes/pseuds/toesohnoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the afterlife, Sawyer gets stuck with Charlie as his Guide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He’d killed the wrong guy. Wrong guy. Hibb’s guy. Dead guy. Not his guy. Not Sawyer. Real Sawyer. No, not him, he wasn’t Sawyer, he was James. James. The name sounded foreign now, so distant and so wrong. Wrong guy. Dead guy.

He was staring at the rain-soaked ground as he walked, barely noticing that his clothes were soaked with water. He just needed a drink. A long one. A strong one.

There was a bar across the street. Bars meant alcohol. Alcohol was nice. He stumbled for a second, teetered at the edge of the pavement, and lost his balance – staggered forwards to try and stay upright, already half-drunk, into the road.

He didn’t see the car hurtling towards him until there was a screech of breaks and pain in his side. He hit the road with a crunch of bone and flash of blood.

* * *

The bed he was lying on was soft.

Sawyer had been in nice beds before. Fancy ones that cost an arm and a leg but impressed whatever woman he was seducing.

He’d stayed at the Ritz (but hadn’t paid the bill). He’d stayed at the Hilton (and hadn’t paid the bill). He’d stayed at the Four Seasons (and had _tried_ not to pay the bill, until they’d found him).

Those beds had been damn nice, but this was different. Softer, and warm all around, so Sawyer wondered if he’d fallen asleep in a padded swimming pool. Seeing as he wasn’t drowning, he’d guess not.

Despite the utter comfort around him, his head hurt. And his legs. And his arms. And his side. His side definitely hurt, like he’d fallen on it, hard.

Must’ve been one hell of a night last night, right? He didn’t remember much, which was odd seeing as he usually knew how to handle his drink, but his—

There’d been a car. A yellow car. Maybe gold. Or maybe it was a truck. Or... something. There’d been a vehicle.

And it had _hit_ him, hadn’t it? Yeah. He’d been crossing the road and then **boom**.

Boom was bad. Boom was very, very bad.

He snapped his eyes opened and looked around. He was expecting a hospital; sterile smell, beeping monitors, annoying doctors, blood tests, all of that. Sure, a bed this comfortable would be out of place in any hospital, but maybe he’d wound up lucky, somewhere private and well-funded.

Except, no. Definitely not. Unless the hospital had had a power outage – and didn’t those places have their own emergency generators anyway? He was sure he’d seen it on one of those medical soaps before – then he wasn’t there. He was somewhere else.

Somewhere pitch black. Pitch black and cosy. Where the hell was black and cosy? Sawyer moved his arm to try and explore and find out what was going on.

Or he _tried_ to move his arm.

This, unfortunately, just served as a way to prove to him that he didn’t have any arms. He was armless. A frantic attempt to wiggle his legs proved that he was also legless.

He would’ve widened his eyes, if he had them.

“What. The. Hell?” he said (or would have, if he had a mouth. Seeing as, apparently, he didn’t, the words seemed to flow directly out of his head and he really didn’t like that.).

“Ah! You’re up.” Fuck. That was another voice. That was another disembodied voice. Disembodied voices from the black – had he just wandered into an art house movie? He’d always hated those things; not enough action, not enough explosions, not enough sex. “Thought it might take you a little longer. You seem lazy.”

Why was that voice so cheery? And why were they insulting him? “I seem _what_?”

Usually people backed off when he used that voice. Instead, he just got a light reply of, “Lazy.”

“Oh…” Well. Maybe it was just harder for his ‘kick ass’ voice to have an effect when he didn’t have legs to kick with and the voice he was talking to didn’t have an ass to be kicked. Presumably. “Where am I?”

“Bloody good question.” Yeah, so he’d like an answer. “Limbo.” An answer that made sense? “Like, the Waiting Room. Judgement Day. Kind of. I dunno.” Well…. This was confidence inspiring. The voice sounded confused. “There’s a speech I’m supposed to give, but… Well. I sort of forgot it. Screw them though, right? It was a boring speech anyway. Me just talking’s way better, believe me.”

“No. Shut the fuck up,” he snapped it out, and then there was just silence and that was perfect. That was absolutely perfect. No annoying British voice rambling on endlessly. Who talked like that anyway, like they needed their mouth corked or just stitched shut?

Apparently, disembodied voices did. Right. Maybe after an hour or so in this darkness, he’d have gone nuts too and would be talking non-stop to strangers.

Alright. There was black. He couldn’t feel anything. He also, apparently, couldn’t move. “Tell me again where we are?”

“Limbo.” The voice sounded a little hurt, a little pissed off, like it was sulking over being snapped at earlier. Sawyer didn’t care.

“Limbo? I’m guessin’ you don’t just mean hot girls dancing under sticks?” That would’ve been a lot more entertaining than floating around in the black.

He thought he heard the voice laughing a little. It sounded weird, coming from nowhere. “Unfortunately not.” Yeah, that was a laughing voice. Good. That was better than a sulking voice. While Sawyer had no objections to making people sulk, it kind of sucked when they were the only person around, and they were also the only person that knew what was going on.

“Figured as much.” Nope. No bikini clad beauties for him. Somehow, he didn’t really care. “That sorta sucks,” he said anyway, because it was sort of expected.

“Yeah, I know.” He sounded like he didn’t think it sucked that much either. “Sorry for disappointing you.”

“You should be. This is my damn afterlife you’re…” He trailed off. Afterlife. _Afterlife_. So that meant…. Yeah. Afterlife. Being hit by a car leads to black floaty goodness. It was simple, really. Simple, but fucking insane. “Afterlife. So I’m…”

“Yep.” Damn, he wished that word didn’t sound so _cheerful_. “I guess. Kinda.” Well… that was better than ‘yep’, wasn’t it? “That’s sort of what we’ve got to go over. It’s complicated. I’ll explain later. In the meantime: Yeah, you’re dead. Sorry about that, mate.”

“’Sorry about that’? ‘Mate’?” Sawyer said, in possibly the worst imitation of a British accent the world has ever known. The voice he was talking to made a small grunt of disgust. “You’re kidding me, right? I die and I’m not even greeted by some hot girl with a harp and halo?”

“You’re so old school, Sawyer.” Holy fuck. The voice knew his name. It _knew_ his _name_. What else did it know? “We got over that whole thing ages ago.”

“So you’re an angel?”

“Nope. I’m a Guide.” Ah, well, that cleared everything up, didn’t it? Sawyer really wanted his body back so that he could cause this guy a lot of pain. He’d already decided that he hated limbo.

He didn’t answer back, because he was currently trying to figure out how to get moving through this black around them; maybe he could swim back to his body, or something. It was just a case of figuring out how.

“Umm…” Apparently, The Voice wasn’t going to let him figure that ought. “Yeah. I’m a guide. _Your_ guide. Which means there’s some stuff we should be doing.”

“Like?”

“Well. Like. Stuff. I dunno. Shut up and listen.”

“I’m listening.” He could multi-task. He could listen and learn how to black-swim at the same time.

There was another pause from his guide, and this guy really didn’t have a clue what he was doing, did he? They could’ve sent him someone more experienced, whoever ‘they’ were.

“You’re in limbo.”

“Yeah. You said that already.”

“Shut up. I’m saying it again.” Sawyer laughed a little at the indignant tone in the guy’s voice. He really loved pissing people off – it made him feel in control, and that was something that he definitely appreciated right now. “You’re in limbo. That’s a very… in-between kinda place. Not heaven, not hell.” Whoa. Those places really existed? Shit. He was so going down. Maybe limbo wasn’t so bad. He could just stay here, right? “Not living, not dead. It’s messed up – a really bad place to be, okay?”

“Okay,” Sawyer agreed, even though he was already conspiring to stay here and set himself up with a nice black home and maybe The Voice could hang around to be made fun of so that Sawyer didn’t get lonely.

“So, basically, it’s up to you what we do next. Whether you live or die, where you move onto, it’s all reliant on you.”

“Is it now?” Well then. That was better. “’that case, I pick that I live. A lot.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t work quite like that. Sorry.”

If this guy apologised one more time, Sawyer’s non-existent head was going to explode. “What _is_ it like, then?”

“Well… we so a sort of ‘This Is Your Life’ thing. Only without the red book. And without Michael what’s-his-name. And without the surprise guests. It’s…. like… Yeah. A cheaper version of that.” Sawyer raised an eyebrow, without a clue what The Voice was going on about. “Then… I dunno. Stuff. I’m sort of new of this.”

“Aw, fuck.” They’d given him a newbie. He died and they stuck him with someone who didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

“Shut up.” Ooh, that was nice and defensive. He liked that.

“Why, you s-”

There was a bright flash of white light, and a buzzing sound, and then there was a kitchen.

His kitchen. Small and compact, barely enough room for one person to walk in. He could remember playing in here as a kid, his mother nearly having a heart attack when he’d started to play with the gas stove.

He hadn’t been in here for years. He’d had to move in with his grandma, and the house had been sold. He hadn’t wanted to go back, anyway, so he wasn’t sure if this was an improvement from limbo. Probably not, because he could remember the faded green carpets from his childhood home, frayed around the edges, and he could remember how they’d had that same carpet all the way through the house, and he could remember how that carpet had looked with blood splashed over it, and, Christ, he was feeling a little light headed now.

Wait a second.

Light _headed_?

He had a head again.

His hand – his _hand_ – darted up and hit his forehead, running through his hair, and yep, he was really there. He was all bodied up and ready to go.

And, he realised as he looked down at himself, sort of see-through. And glowing. Oh-kay.

A cough at the other side of the room made him look up, to see a short guy leaning against the doorway, wearing a faded ‘Driveshaft’ t-shirt. The band name seemed familiar, a vague memory of an annoying song, but he couldn’t fully recall it. That was gonna bug him.

The guy was cute, though. Standing there, just as see-through as Sawyer, the pair of them lurking in his old kitchen like a pair of barely-there ghosts. Smiling, he still looked a little nervous, as if Sawyer was about to attack him for real now that they had bodies again.

As long as he didn’t talk, Sawyer probably wouldn’t have any need to. He looked over to the shelves, at his mother’s neatly labelled tin boxes – ‘plain flour’, ‘self-raising’, ‘castor sugar’ – before he heard the door opening through in the hallway.

He pushed past the short man in the door, and _shit_. That was his mother. Blonde hair and rosy smile, looking a thousand times more like an angel than the ‘Guide’ standing next to him. His father entered the front door after her, and the sight of him made Sawyer’s blood chill, but he was distracted by what his mother was carrying – a baby, small and sleeping in her arms.

Was that him?

“We should probably skip past the early years, right?”

He didn’t pay attention, staring at the scene in front of him as his mother and father laughed and joked with each other, something that he couldn’t remember happening, ever. He remembered yelling and swearing and cursing, and his father hitting his mother, and those final gunshots, but not happy giggles and wide smiles. “That’s my mom,” he breathed softly.

“Yeah, but… Nothing all that important happens, and we’ll be here all night if we stick around for the first step, first word, y’know?”

Sawyer stepped forwards, following his parents into the living room, with its tiny TV in the corner and ornaments sitting on the mantelpiece. His mom moved forwards to sit on the brown couch, his father staying standing, looking down at the baby with a contented smile on his face. “That’s my _father_ ,” Sawyer whispered in wonder, because his father didn’t smile like that.

“Yeah…” He could tell just from the voice that the guide with him had an eyebrow raised and probably thought he was weird, but whatever. These were his parents. His dead parents being not dead.

Before he could stare in wonder any more, there was another bright white flash.

His bedroom. Dark and shady again, and he knew this night. He still had nightmares about it.

“ _Let's go. Listen to Mommy, this is really important. Get under the bed, don't make a sound; don't come out, no matter what happens. Don't come out, okay_?” The voice sounded distant, as if being played on a turned-down recording, but it was his mom, crouched on the floor next to him, talking to him in that smooth everything-will-be-alright, listen-to-Mommy voice.

Everything wasn’t alright. That voice lied.

“ _Okay_.” Quiet voice, his voice, and then she hugged him for the last time. He could hear his father pounding on the door, yelling, and he wanted to go and shoot that son of a bitch so that his mother would be safe, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t think, rooted to the spot and staring.

He had this conversation memorized, but it still felt like a fresh cut. “ _I love you_.”

“ _I love you too, Mommy_.” That was the last time he’d told someone he loved them and meant it.

Then she was hustling him under the bed and he couldn’t do this, couldn’t watch this. She walked right through him, the real him, the ghost him, to the door. She walked right _through_ him and he should have stopped her. He was see-through and dead but he had to stop her or she would be dead like him too. He had to save her.

But she spoke once more then was gone and… no. No way was he doing this. He glanced to the side, where his Guide was leaning against the wall and looking around, confused and not knowing what was going to happen next. Sawyer didn’t want to let him find out, didn’t want to let anyone find out, ever. “Stop it. The thing. Stop it.” He had to raise his voice to be heard above his mother’s yelling, his father’s arguing. “Move on or… something. However it works. I don’t wanna--”

 _Bang._

Such a dumb little sound, so pathetic and small, but it was that sound that had destroyed his world. That was the sound that had turned him into ‘Sawyer’, into a conman, into a bastard who was destined to travel down to hell once this torture was over with.

“Shit.” His Guide pushed himself away from the wall, eyes wide. “Fuck. Shit.” Sawyer wondered if he should have been freaking out too, but it felt like he’d been hollowed out, that empty feeling in his stomach like he’d gone down a roller coaster too fast, destined to crash at any second. “Sh -- ”

“Just move us the hell on.” He could hear footsteps up the corridor, could count the seconds until the door to his room would open.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Door handle down. Heavy boots on the floor, and his father’s face blank and emotionless. Come on. Don’t make him watch this too. Go backwards to the other memory, the smiling memory, or forwards to any number of things in his future. Anything. Just not this.

There was a soft creak as his father sat down on the bed, and he’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten that he hadn’t been able to even turn over at night without his bed groaning and complaining. A few nights, he’d even thought that the entire thing was going to collapse underneath him.

The gun rose to his father’s temple, was placed there tenderly, and his father’s hand was shaking, almost unnoticeably. Sawyer could see the tears in his eyes. He could see the struggle that took place in the man’s head before…

White.

This time, the white didn’t fade to a scarring memory. They just landed in a room, the only colour at all coming from his guide’s form. There were walls, it was a white corridor that seemed to stretch on for miles, and his guide was once again leaning. He seemed addicted to that.

He looked disturbed, though, which didn’t make sense. Even if he was new at this, like he’d said, he must’ve been forewarned of Sawyer’s cheerfully fucked up life, or he must’ve guessed or _something_. Sawyer didn’t care what – he just wanted that stunned look off of his guide’s face, because he could just tell that it was going to morph into pity at any second and he didn’t want that. He hated pity.

He watched his Guide’s face carefully and he could see it: the way the gaping mouth shut quickly, lips down turned, the way those blue eyes stayed widened but looked up to him, inch by inch, the way his forehead creased together and his Guide just seemed to shrink right in front of him, then there it was. The goddamn pity.

And the one question that he hated the most: “Are you alright?”

Okay, maybe there were a few others he’d hate more – ‘what’s your real name’ being one of them – but that was still pretty high up there. “Yeah, I’m fine.” But his voice was gruff and he sounded like he wanted to get real violent real soon. Good. He did.

His father’s hand had been _trembling_.

His Guide didn’t seem to buy the excuse, still watching him with those pitying eyes. “That was pretty big…” he said cautiously.

‘No shit’, Sawyer wanted to say, ‘you just made me relive the worst experience of my life and you think it’s ‘pretty big’? Fuck off.’

Instead he shook his head and kicked at the pure white floor they were standing on. “It’s nothing.”

“Right. Sure.” That was sarcasm, wasn’t it? Sawyer hated that, unless it was him speaking. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

“Good.”

Silence.

Sawyer stared at the white floor and tried to bleach the _oh god, what have I done_ that he’d watched in his father’s eyes out of his mind, and tried to get rid of his mother’s yells and pleas still ringing in his ears.

It didn’t really work.

Fine. Something else, something different. There was nothing worse that he could be shown; he’d made it through the worst memory in his life. Only way to go was up, right? “What’s next?”

His Guide didn’t look happy with the idea, and kept his arms crossed. “You sure you’re ready?”

“ _Yeah_ , I’m ready.” He wanted to pace but he kept himself on the spot, not wanting to show how shook up he was. The tightness in his shoulders and scowl on his face probably gave that away, and for once he couldn’t control his body language. It was messed up, seeing as that was how he made his living – or used to – and he’d be in trouble if this was a con. Luckily for him, it wasn’t, but that still wasn’t good enough. “Wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t ready, would I?”

“Uh, no. ‘course you wouldn’t. Obviously. I was just— Calm down, alright?”

“I _am_ calm.” He was. He was, really. He would be. And in the meantime, there was no need for some blond stranger to know that he wasn’t.

The Guide seemed to know anyway. That wasn’t fair. It was probably some supernatural-dead-power-thing, right?

“Right. I know you are. But, y’know, that was intense. Wouldn’t blame you for being a little freaked out.”

Sawyer shook his head. “I’m not -- ”

“I know. But… we could just sit here for a bit anyway.”

Pity. Pity. Pity. Damn it. He’d had that his whole life, until he’d just stopped using his real name, had just stopped letting people know his past. It had been bad enough when he was alive. It wasn’t fair for this to chase him once he was dead too.

“I don’t need a break,” he snarled at his guide, who didn’t seem that affected by the unsaid threat in the words. Then again, once you were dead, what else could be done to you?

The guy shrugged and sat down. “Fine, fine. But I do. Flipping’s hard. So sit down and let me rest.”

Shit, that was fake. Obviously so, too, and it was pretty clear that this kid had never been a conman when he was alive. He couldn’t lie all that effectively, at least not on the spot.

Still, Sawyer shook his head and sat down, leaning against the opposite wall. Maybe this worked. This way, his guide looked like the weak and pathetic one, while Sawyer could sit back and recover anyway. He still wanted that distraction, though.

He needed it, because this was stuff that he’d been trying to repress his entire life. He was good at it too. Sure, he carried around that letter and he _was_ going to kill the real Sawyer some day, but… He didn’t think about this. He just thought about that bastard and how much he hated him without thinking about why.

Therapists would probably scold him for that. That was one of the main reasons that he didn’t go to them.

He looked up, staring at his Guide in order to ground himself. Pretty nice way to do it too, blond hair and young face. Small, too; when Sawyer was in the mood for guys, that was the type he went for. Small, cute, ‘innocent’. He didn’t really care if they genuinely were or not, because he usually didn’t bother talking to them any more than he had to. Sex was just sex. Guys got that. The women he conned, on the other hand, really didn’t tend to.

He got the feeling this kid wouldn’t get that either. He looked like someone who was into ‘making love’ and whispered declarations of devotion, like he’d had his heart broken one too many times.

Yeah, definitely getting over some recent heartbreak. You could tell around the eyes. They didn’t fit with the rest of the face; haunted and sad and Sawyer was curious about them. He liked eyes like that, that said ‘I’ve been through more than you’d think’. He didn’t like conning people with eyes like that, because then you had to _really_ make sure you did your research, otherwise their past would come back to bite you on the ass.

But those were nice eyes, deep eyes, even if he currently couldn’t see all of them seeing as they were staring down at his Guide’s black nails. Still, nice eyes, and that was a good point. The personality seemed a little annoying so far, but that might’ve been the fact that Sawyer was extra irritable today because of the whole ‘death’ thing.

Either way, you didn’t have to like the personality in order to fuck them, so if they were going to be here for—

Shit. Those eyes just glanced up at him _really_ fast. Could he read thoughts?

Sawyer cleared his throat, because he didn’t like the idea of that at all. Change the subject, now. “Uh. Flipping? What’s that?”

“Changing through memories.” Right. He’d guessed as much, but his guide wasn’t looking at him with wide eyes any more, so that had worked. “Had some training and stuff, but I’m still a little shaky with it. Took some guy back to the crucifixion, a few weeks back. _That_ was bad. Poor bloke nearly died. Again.”

“You do that to me and I’ll wring your damn neck.”

“Really?” One eyebrow rose, and it looked as if he didn’t believe Sawyer. Idiot.

“Yeah. Won’t feel guilty about it either.” And, for some reason, that just got a small smirk and that hadn’t been the reaction he was aiming for. It was a nice reaction and that was a hot smirk, but he’d wanted a servile nod and a promise to get everything right from now on.

“Oh, good. ‘cause I’m sure I’ll deserve the wringing.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer said, before just running out of steam. A few seconds ago, it had been easy to talk but now his mind was blank and... um… “What’s your name?” Urgh. Worst conversation topic ever.

“What?” He looked mildly confused for a few seconds, before seeming to realise that he’d never introduced himself. “Oh. Charlie.” Right. Well, that was helpful, but the conversation promptly died after that, until Charlie half-heartedly added on. “Charlie Pace.”

Sawyer nodded as if this was highly interesting, when he really couldn’t have given a shit about some dead guy’s second name. “So…”

“Yeah. So.”

“You’re a Guide?”

“Yep.” Charlie abruptly stopped talking, and was that seriously the only response that he was going to get for that question?

Jesus. Someone needed to teach this guy how to make conversation, fast. “That was your cue to explain what the hell ‘a guide’ is.” There. Conversation 101.

“Oh. Okay. Didn’t think you’d be interested. Well. It’s… this, basically.”

Sawyer rolled his eyes. “That’s helpful.”

Charlie sighed, glaring at him without a lot of resentment in the stare. He kind of liked being glared at like that. It beat the hell out of angry and/or possessive husbands glaring at him after he got a little too close to their wives.

“It’s… showing spirits around. Like you.”

“Like me,” Sawyer confirmed, a little bitterly because he didn’t _want_ to be dead. He still had stuff to do. A lot of stuff to do. Like hunt down the guy that had killed his goddamn parents and then kill him right back. He’d got the wrong guy, earlier tonight. Before the accident. Just some innocent guy selling shrimp in a van. He shook his head, wondering if that guy’s soul was somewhere in limbo too, and if he could possibly find him and apologise. He shook his head; nope. Bad idea. If the driver that had hit him earlier came up now and said ‘sorry, I hit the wrong person’ he wouldn’t just smile and forgive them.

He looked back towards Charlie, remembering that he existed. “So that means you’re dead too?” he asked, knowing the answer already.

“Uh, no.” Alright, maybe he _didn’t_ know the answer already. How did that work? “This is just part time for me.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah. Honest. I’m in a band. Sort of. Driveshaft? We’re on a kinda hiatus at the moment.”

Sawyer nodded like he actually had a clue about the band Charlie was talking about. The logo was on his t-shirt, and he felt like he _should_ have known about it, but he didn’t. “Right. And where’s trying to terrorise me fit in with the band?”

“It doesn’t. I just go to sleep and get sent here. It’s bloody confusing. But I don’t remember any of this stuff while I’m awake.”

“That must suck?” Sawyer suggested, not really understanding how Charlie could just _forget_ all of this stuff. He didn’t like the idea, to be honest.

Charlie shrugged, and didn’t seem all that bothered by it. “It’s alright, actually. I mean, yeah. My memories go missing. That’s a little weird. But, y’know, otherwise I’d be traumatised for life. I mean, can you imagine trying to play your bloody guitar on stage after you’ve just watched someone getting pulverised with one the night before?”

Sawyer frowned. “Who the hell ‘pulverises’ someone with a guitar?”

“Bloody nut jobs, that’s who.”

Sawyer wasn’t entirely sure about the particular example given, but he could get the idea in theory. Come on, in this one night Charlie had already heard Sawyer’s mother’s death, and had been two seconds away from watching his father’s. That’d mess a guy up, watching that sort of shit every single night.

Still, Sawyer didn’t like it for reasons that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, yet. “So you won’t remember me?”

“When I’m awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Nope. I’ll remember you when I’m here, though. You’re not all that easy to forget.”

Despite himself, Sawyer felt a warm glow spreading from his stomach, and he had to look down to hide the smile on his face that he was sure was his goofiest ever (disregarding, naturally, his goofy smiles from when he’d had braces and a crush on the girl next door. He preferred to live his life as if that embarrassing period of his existence didn’t exist).

He didn’t look up, staring at his hands instead. “Really?”

“Really.”

The sincere tone in that voice managed to get rid of some of the way that he was starting to just turn to mush. It allowed him to glance up, grinning, knowing exactly just how much to smile to make his dimples show. “And why’s that?”

The too sincere, too real, too close look on Charlie’s face disappeared, replaced with a wicked one. “’cause your hair’s weird.” There was a half-wink, and then Charlie was climbing to his feet and holding out a hand. “Come on, get up you wanker. We can move on now.” After a second’s thought, Sawyer grabbed his hand and pulled himself up.


	2. Chapter 2

They seemed to spend days hunting through Sawyer’s memories. They sat down in the bedroom belonging to the nine-year-old version of him, and Charlie rifled through his tape collection and laughed openly at the titles. When Sawyer tried to stand up for himself or the bands, Charlie just chucked the cassettes at his head.

They’d sailed right through, because for some reason Charlie could pick things up while Sawyer’s hands just sailed right through. Both of them could walk through walls and float, and Sawyer had had a lot of fun haunting his old maths classroom.

The fun had been slightly lessened when Charlie had explained that they weren’t really in the past, and that they were just in Sawyer’s memories, so nothing they did really affected anything. That had been kinda shit.

Still, seeing that oh-my-god-the-blackboard’s-floating look on Mrs. Adams face had been worth the world.

Watching Charlie giggling like a school kid – or cackling like an evil mastermind; they both sort of applied – had also been worth something pretty damn special.

Not so damn special had been Charlie making fun of him after they’d flipped to the memory of his first kiss – twelve years old, with the class geek. He’d liked her at the time, but afterwards had said he’d only done it as a dare. She’d cried. He sort of felt bad for that.

Then there was the time he’d lost his virginity, but he’d ordered Charlie out of the room for that, and Charlie had actually listened to him and left. Of course, that had left Sawyer alone with awkward grunts and honest declarations of love and devotion.

Through his first con, his second con, the cons and the relationships he’d screwed up, everything.

And now they were here.

He didn’t like here.

Here was bad.

Here was a hotel room, like dozens of the other ‘here’s in his memories. From the looks of things, he spent more time in hotel rooms than anywhere else. There was nothing really out of the ordinary about this one; not too fancy, not too shabby, just somewhere roughly in the middle.

But Jessica was sitting on the bed. Jessica, with her pretty blonde hair and too wide smile and little kid. He wondered what had happened with her, and if his stunt had ruined her marriage. Probably. Still, she was alive, which was better than he was doing as of late.

“I don’t want to see this one,” he said to Charlie, who had gone through to the bathroom to inspect the toiletries – he seemed to do that in every single hotel room that Sawyer’s memories brought them to. When questioned about it, he never gave a proper answer about _why._

Charlie popped out of the bathroom, glancing towards Sawyer, then towards Jessica and the memory’s Sawyer on the bed. “Why? What happens?”

Yeah. Sawyer hated those questions. Charlie would allow him to skip past absolutely anything he wanted, but he had to describe his reasons for it exactly.

He shook his head, and looked down. “I don’t con her.”

There. That entire screwed up scam in four simple words. He was the king of condensed speech.

Well. The king of _confusing_ condensed speech, in any case, judging from the way that Charlie was frowning. Sawyer had spent a great portion of time recently cataloguing all of the various facial expressions that Charlie had, and this one was definitely the ‘what the fuck?’ one.

“And that’s… bad?”

Sawyer nodded, and he didn’t feel like clearing the matter up for Charlie. That confusion expression was too damn cute. “Yeah.”

“Oh.” Charlie nodded too, like he was trying to seem cool and like he completely understood. He did that a lot, agreeing or claiming to know what he was doing when he really didn’t. Sawyer did it too, but Sawyer was better at bluffing his way through situations he knew nothing about. Charlie seemed to understand how much he sucked at it, because he gave up and rolled his eyes. “I really don’t get you, mate.”

‘Mate’. Over the past while, that had definitely become one of Sawyer’s favourite words. It sounded intimate. Hell, it sounded damn _dirty_ when Charlie said it.

He smiled and shook his head. “Hope you never do, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.” How many times had he heard that objection lately? Too many. Way too many. Why couldn’t Charlie just shut up and accept that that was his name and that Sawyer would quite happily call seventy-two year old men ‘kid’?

He shrugged, and glanced towards his past self getting off the bed and aiming for the suitcase. “Might as well be.”

That earned him another glare, one of those looks that made Charlie looked like a toddler, and then Charlie pouted.

Fucking. Pouted.

And Sawyer thought it was adorable. Christ, he was getting cabin fever or something.

Charlie crossed his arms over his chest. “I hate you.” Sawyer had heard those words so many times, but Charlie didn’t mean them. He could tell that just from the way Charlie was obviously fighting back a smile.

“Yeah, I know.” He smirked again, giving Charlie a once-over. “I like it that way.”

There was a startled laugh from Charlie. “Freak.”

“Yeah, yeah.” They paused and let the silence between them fall, watching the other Sawyer explaining his ‘business investment’ to Jessica. It was only when that twinge of guilt got too much that Sawyer turned to Charlie again. “You gonna skip this one or not?”

“Or not, I think.”

What? That was fucked. Charlie was his Guide. _His_ Guide. In some messed up way, Sawyer had started assuming that meant that Charlie had to do whatever he said. He kinda got off on that. Now there was a refusal and that wasn’t as much fun as Charlie nodding and saying ‘sure’ and immediately doing what he was told.

Charlie grinned a little, and looked up at him. “You’re gonna do it.”

Aw, shit.

Charlie had taught him, roughly, how it worked, how to do it, when they’d been sitting by the side of the pool watching Sawyer, at twelve years old, trying to drown a kid that he hadn’t liked. He didn’t even remember their name any more. Maybe Scott. Maybe Steve. Something like that.

Still, he’d been a little distracted because he’d pushed Charlie into the pool minutes beforehand and Charlie’s clothes were soaking. He’d had to jump in a few seconds afterwards, after it became apparent that Charlie couldn’t swim and he’d started to get worried that maybe Guides could drown.

But how could he have been expected to focus on supernatural nonsense when Charlie was sitting beside him, with his wet clothes clinging neatly to his body?

He had no idea, but apparently it _was_ expected because Charlie was looking at him with a hopeful smile. Reluctantly, he grabbed Charlie’s arm – and was secretly surprised at the muscle there, because Charlie didn’t look like he’d have any – and tried to do this.

 _Close your eyes, focus, remember where you’re going, then pow, you’re there._ It sounded simple when Charlie said it, didn’t it?

“Alright, eyes closed.” Sawyer did as Charlie ordered. “Where are we going?”

“Hibb’s birthday party.” It had been a pretty dumb night, full of booze and girls and music, but Sawyer wanted to take Charlie there just to get him dancing, just so he’d have an excuse to slip up behind him and dance too. At a party as frantic as that, Charlie might not even notice at first if Sawyer slipped a hand under his shirt, or started kissing his neck, or led him upstairs to one of the bedrooms, or took his clothes off and fucked him.

Alright, he might _notice_. He probably wouldn’t care, though.

Right?

“Sounds fun. I expect strippers. Now focus on it. And focus on us being there - ” There with dancing and making out and sex in the dark bedrooms. Yeah, Sawyer could focus on that “- and just… think.”

Sawyer kept his eyes closed and focused and thought, except focusing on this made him start to get hard and _fuck_ that was bad.

White.

“… _You got another date you could just say so_.” His eyes snapped open and his hand tightened on Charlie’s arm when he heard that voice. Cassidy? No, way. They weren’t supposed to be here. This was supposed to be a party.

Charlie glanced around, looking confused. Before he could speak, Sawyer was letting go of his arm and taking a step backwards.

“ _I can only wrap my mind around one woman at a time. But I appreciate the permission._ ” And there was Cassidy, lying in bed, the image of selfish perfection -- so wrapped up in herself and happy. He screwed her over, didn’t he?

He shook his head. “Screw this. I’m fed up with my life.” There. He glanced towards Charlie, because Charlie was his Guide, which meant that he had to do something to fix this.

Instead he just frowned, and asked the question that Sawyer knew was coming. “Why? What happens here?”

What could he even say about this? He watched himself, a little younger, a little more innocent, heading for that dumb suitcase. It always surprised him that so many people fell for such a cheap trick. Cassidy hadn’t. She was smarter than that.

“I con her.”

“Wait, what?” He couldn’t even appreciate the perfect confusion on Charlie’s face, too focused on Cassidy. He’d loved her, hadn’t he? He thought so. It was confusing, because he’d never quite been able to separate his own emotions from the ones he’d been acting, not when it came to her. “I thought _not_ conning people was bad?”

“It is. This is just… different.” And he wasn’t going to get into it. He wasn’t going to explain any of it to anyone, ever. It was just plain sadistic to expect him to, and Charlie had seemed like a nice enough guy. “I’m not gonna get into it. Let’s do you instead.”

He’d been thinking about it for a while. Charlie was getting to run through his memories at random; the least he deserved was one back, one memory, anything. Preferably something big, something that meant something, but he’d settle for anything at all. It was only fair.

Charlie thought for a second, but then shook his head. “It’s sorta against the rules.”

“But it’s possible?”

“Well, yeah, theoretically, but - ” Charlie had made one very fatal mistake. Well. A few. Firstly, he’d taught Sawyer how to flip for himself. Secondly, he’d just confirmed that this was possible. Therefore, it just took Sawyer a second to grab Charlie’s arm, close his eyes, think and…

White.

Immediately there was a new voice speaking, with the same rough accent as Charlie. “ _There you go. Give it a few seconds to hit._ ”

Everything always sounded distant when you heard it in a memory, but you could see it perfectly. A small and dingy flat, piano standing in the corner, with a younger Charlie and another man sitting on the couch together. He moved around so that he could look at them both, raising an eyebrow when he saw the needle sitting on the coffee table, the small bag sitting next to it.

He looked up to Charlie with a surprised smile, because _he_ was a drug addict? Or had been? Or something? Well. It was always the quiet ones.

Except the last thing that you’d ever use to describe to describe Charlie was ‘quiet’.

Whatever. Sawyer was expecting a smile back, maybe a not-very-pissed-off glare, at worse, but instead Charlie had paled slightly. “No. Sawyer, take us back. I don’t want to do this.”

Well, Charlie was the damn Guide. He should have been able to take them back. It looked like he was freaking out, though, and Sawyer wasn’t in a hurry to move them on. If Charlie was panicking, then this had to be _good._

“ _I know, Liam. Think we’re past the point where you have to tell me how to do drugs, y’know_?” Charlie said, and Sawyer saw the faintest flicker of guilt on Liam’s face. Damn. This was like tuning in during the middle of a juicy soap opera. He focused in on the two people in the memory, ignoring his Guide entirely.

Liam nodded and leaned against the back of the couch they were both sitting on. His feet came out to prop up on the edge of the coffee table. “ _I know_.” There was a heart-breaking wistfulness in his voice, faint pangs of regret, and Sawyer really wanted to know the story behind that.

Instead Liam covered it over before it was noticed, and grabbed Charlie and _tugged_ until he was in his lap, straddling his legs. Charlie looked a little bit stunned to have been shifted like that and to suddenly be sitting on somebody. Not too stunned, though, so it had obviously happened before.

“ _Want you to ride me tonight, Charlie,_ ” Liam said with a smirk, and it was pretty obvious that he’d been thinking about this for a while. His hand traced down Charlie’s side before grabbing his ass, hard and possessive.

Charlie frowned and glanced around the apartment, as if checking to see if there was anyone there. There wasn’t, obviously, just a dead guy and his Guide. Charlie quickly turned his attention back to Liam. “ _What the fuck_?” He wasn’t objecting to the hand on his ass, so it seemed to just be the positioning that was freaking him out.

“ _I’m serious. Think it’d be hot_.” Liam stayed leaning back against the couch, and just skimmed his eyes over the form in his lap. Judging from the crooked smile, what he saw there pleased him.

“ _Karen’s pregnant_.”

“ _So_?” His hands were still on Charlie’s ass, but they moved so that they could slip inside the denim of his jeans, over bare skin instead. “ _I don’t mind._ ”

Charlie frowned, pouted, and he looked like he was trying to be serious but those drugs were stopping him. “ _She will_.”

“ _Will she? We’ll invite her to watch next time_.” Judging from the way Liam’s smirk evolved into a wicked grin, he liked that idea. He liked it a lot.

Charlie didn’t, because he shoved at Liam’s shoulder. “ _Shut up. No. It’s all… bad’n’wrong’n’stuff._ ”

The smile faded, and Liam looked away, and looked pissed off, as if he might punch Charlie at any second. His gaze landed on the table, on the drugs, and he looked defiantly back at Charlie. “ _I’ll give you another hit if you do it._ ”

Charlie looked uncomfortable, but thoughtful, and at the same time disgusted. He bit at his lip for a second, before releasing it. “ _What_?”

“ _If you do it, I’ll give you another hit, as soon as I come_.”

Charlie glanced behind him, at the bag of drugs on the table, and he just stared at them for a few moments. Sawyer wasn’t sure whether he was urging him to have strength and say no, or if he wanted him to continue just so that he could watch. He was already hard again, cock demanding attention. He glanced up and around, to see that his Guide had left the room.

Just as well, because two seconds later Charlie turned back around and kissed Liam. Messy and deep, almost angry, and _fuck_ yeah. Sawyer shifted where he’d been sitting so that he could get a better view – to where he could see the slight way that Charlie’s hips were rocking against Liam, Liam’s hands moving up from his ass, gripping his hips hard enough to leave bruises.

And damn, they looked good together, bodies clicking just right, Liam’s darker hair contrasting with Charlie’s blonde strands. Charlie was rushing, his movements fast and clumsy, like he was trying to get this over with as quickly as he could. Sawyer couldn’t see why; Liam was hot.

But Charlie’s hands were shaking as he reached down to the button on his pants, undoing it and pulling down the zip then slipping out of them. He had to stand up to do so, and the low groan that Liam made when he saw Charlie undressing seemed to rumble throughout the flat.

Liam hurriedly undid his own jeans, just pushing them down to his knees while Charlie disappeared through a door, swaying from the drugs slightly as he walked and yet seeming to be completely comfortable naked. When he reappeared, there was a well-used bottle of lube in his hand, and both Sawyer and Liam had to muffle small sounds from seeing him.

Sawyer glanced around quickly, checking the room, but the other Charlie was still absent, had ran off so he wouldn’t be embarrassed. Good. As much as he liked his Guide’s company, he was hard and this was damn hot and he _needed_ to jack off. He couldn’t exactly do that with Charlie watching him.

He could definitely do it watching Charlie, though, as the other climbed back into Liam’s lap and passed the bottle to him. After undoing his pants, he managed to grab his erection at the exact moment as Liam pressed two slick fingers into Charlie’s ass and started to lazily prep him. His breath shuddered out as he watched, unable to take his eyes off of Charlie – his eyes were hooded, cheeks flushed, hands clinging to Liam’s biceps to keep himself upright.

Liam pulled his fingers back, slicked up his cock, and then looked to Charlie expectantly. Sawyer stroked himself as Charlie lowered himself onto Liam; he kept his grip firm and a little too tight (because Charlie _would_ be tight, he could tell, no matter how many times you pinned him against a wall and fucked him).

He moved his hand in time with Charlie, stroking up as Charlie raised himself, down as he lowered again. Fast and brutal; it would’ve felt better if he was sitting there in Liam’s position, with his hands clinging to Charlie’s hips and his eyes screwed shut, but this way worked too because he could imagine it. So clearly, he could imagine how it would feel to be inside Charlie like that.

It was quick, quicker than he usually jerked off but Charlie was definitely in a hurry, for whatever reason. He didn’t care, getting closer and closer with each movement of his hand. He was going to come before either Liam or Charlie, way before them, but he didn’t think he cared because—

Ow.

Fuck.

Ow.

His jaw hurt like hell, and he realised belatedly that he’d been punched. By Charlie. Right on the face. And Charlie was standing there looking extremely pissed off and really to punch him again, while Liam and the memory of Charlie carried on fucking in the background.

He was still hard, though, as he put himself back in his trousers, maybe even more so because Charlie was here and _angry_. It was fucking hot.

Right up until Charlie slapped him again, just for good measure. Then it wasn’t hot. Then it was just annoying. “What. The. Fuck?” Sawyer snapped, his face aching.

“‘What the fuck’?” Charlie mimicked, and shoved at his shoulders. “Piss off. You _wanker_. Keep your goddamn hands out your pants.”

Sawyer smirked and glanced to the side, at the couple on the sofa. He deliberately dragged his eyes over the other Charlie, wishing that Liam had thought to take his shirt off so that he could _really_ gawk and make the man in front of him blush. It was easy enough to do anyway, as he looked out of the memory and back to the real Charlie, glancing over the clothed body in front of him and making sure that Charlie knew he was imagining him naked and begging.

“You kidding me? That’s fucking hot.” He stepped forwards, right into Charlie’s space. Charlie glared – really glared, and there was actually some hate there – but he didn’t back up. Sawyer could feel Charlie’s breath on him. “You can’t blame me for- ”

“ _God, baby brother. Keep doing that_ ,” Liam moaned. It took a few seconds for the ‘brother’ to register in Sawyer’s mind, but when it did his eyebrows rose and he grinned, because… whoa. That was even kinkier than he’d thought.

Brothers. Now he knew, they sort of looked similar. Sort of. Liam looked like the butch version of Charlie.

“Damn. Wouldn’t have figured you were into that.” Hell, did you ever figure that someone was ‘into’ incest? He glanced back towards Liam and Charlie on the couch, to the way their bodies clicked together and he was still hard, still wanted to be in Liam’s place on the couch with Charlie expertly riding his cock.

“I’m not,” Charlie protested, but his words were empty and full of guilt and regret.

Sawyer should have backed off, because Charlie looked close to breaking, but he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t programmed to take a step back when things seemed to be getting intense. It was his automatic reaction to make it worse. “Uh-huh?” There was a loud and extremely convenient moan from Charlie with Liam (and, god, that was one of the most erotic sounds he’d heard in his life). “’cause that kind of implies otherwise, Luke.”

Charlie looked like he hadn’t picked up on the reference, but he glared more anyway. “Screw you.” Ah, that was a lovely response. Sawyer just smiled wider. “Take us back _now_ Sawyer.”

Nope, no way was he doing that. It was way too entertaining to stay here, and he had a damn good view. “How ‘bout you ask a little nicer?”

Charlie’s face darkened, and Sawyer was fairly sure that he was about to get punched again. “Take us back now, or I’m going to chuck your soul down to hell.”

That was enough to make Sawyer freeze, to make his smile falter, because… Charlie wasn’t serious. Okay, maybe he’d been acting like an asshole, but sending him to hell was a bit of an extreme punishment for just that.

“You can’t do that.” Sawyer wasn’t sure if he meant physically or morally. Maybe both.

The cold look in Charlie’s blue eyes, that were usually smiling and warm, said that he’d definitely be able to do it, at least morally. He was smirking, and it was cruel, and that couldn’t be human. He’d assumed he was, but no human could look that evil.

“Want to bet your afterlife on it?”

Sawyer couldn’t decide whether or not to believe him. He could usually read people well. He could usually read them perfectly, in seconds. Just a tiny amount of time spent with anyone person and he knew all he needed to know.

But he’d spent ages with Charlie – he wasn’t even sure how long – and he’d never been able to tell that he’d fucked his brother in the past. That seemed like the sort of thing you were supposed to be able to read from someone.

Damn it.

Shaking his head angrily, Sawyer stepped forwards and grabbed Charlie’s arm. He made sure to do it hard enough that it would hurt, that it had to hurt, that there’d be bruises if he had any luck. He didn’t like threats.

He’d had enough of them in his lifetime that he ought to have been immune to them by now; they should have been nothing to him. But this wasn’t nothing at all, because it was his _Guide_ and it was _Charlie_ and it was just… fucked.

The dingy flat around them faded to never-ending white, as he brought them back to the corridor that they’d rested in after he’d freaked out of his parents’ death. The brothers’ cries faded too, but that anger on Charlie’s face didn’t. Aw, come on. He’d done exactly as he’d been asked, for once. Yeah, it hadn’t been willingly, but he’d still done it. Charlie should have been cutting him some slack.

Instead Charlie just yanked his arm back from Sawyer’s tight grip, which only made him stumble back a few paces from the force of it. It wasn’t the most graceful movement in the world, and Charlie would never make it as a ballet dancer, but it showed perfectly how pissed off he was.

Fuck, Sawyer could feel a slight amount of panic welling, because he’d really screwed up. Usually, he didn’t care about hurting people’s feelings. Unfortunately, he usually wasn’t dead, and he usually wasn’t turning the one person he knew in the afterlife against him. “Wait, Charlie,” he started, because he could do this. He could apologise. He _could_. “Look, I - ”

Charlie just shook his head, turned around, and walked off. Although, in this empty space, there was nowhere for him to actually go, he faded and disappeared right into the air.

Sawyer stayed standing, and stared at the blank area of space where Charlie had been standing two seconds previously and should have still been standing now.

“Shit.”


	3. Chapter 3

Charlie didn’t come back for what seemed like eternity. That left Sawyer with space -- lots of space and not really a whole lot else.

Just a gently sprawling white corridor that reminded him of sci-fi films and mental institutions. He’d never been into sci-fi. It was all crap that people had to have come up with when they were high. You couldn’t come up with an idea like an alien bursting out of someone’s chest without being on a handful of different drugs. Sawyer kept having to glance down and check inside his shirt to make sure that there were no aliens waiting to jump out of there. So far, he seemed to be clean.

Since he was more or less alone here, he could afford to be paranoid. He could even afford to be scared, as long as no one ever found out about it.

He’d started walking eventually. At first, he’d sat down and stayed on the spot because he wanted to be there when Charlie came back. He’d waited for hours, and when it became apparent that Charlie _wasn’t_ coming back, he’d stood up and tried to flip to one of the memories. It hadn’t worked. He’d remained where he stood, even as he stopped and focused and visualised non-stop.

It had only taken about ten minutes of that for him to start feeling ridiculous and quit.

Since then, he’d been walking. And walking. And walking. And then, if he was lucky, he could do just a little bit more walking.

He was probably going in circles. It was impossible to tell in the white landscape, where there was no colour and absolutely no distinguishing features. Just a sprawling mass of nothing, that had no end and yet made him feel claustrophobic all the same.

Because of that, he couldn’t help the way his heart heaved in relief when he saw a blotch of colour in the distance. He didn’t care what it was. It could be a cop with a gun or even a goddamn bear, but at that point he’d hug whoever it was gratefully and start singing their praises for rescuing him.

He hoped it was Charlie, but as he half-walked half-ran towards him it was clear that it wasn’t. Charlie didn’t wear black t-shirts covered with a white apron. Even if he did, then he didn’t seem like the type that would have sauce stains down the front of his clothes.

He also didn’t have greying hair. But, most significantly, he wasn’t someone that Sawyer had ever murdered. He wasn’t Frank Duckett.

Sawyer stopped moving and just stared. That was definitely the guy, alright. If Sawyer got close enough, he’d probably be able to smell the stink of shrimp still clinging desperately to that apron. Frank. Damn. Duckett. Not Frank Sawyer. Not the guy that killed his mom, just a poor bastard who got mixed up with the wrong kind of people. With people like Hibbs. With people like Sawyer.

“Kid? You’re staring at me.”

“Yeah.” No point denying it, because there was a dead man standing in front of him talking to him. He had every right to stare.

“Are you freaked out?”

Sawyer paused for a second, considered it. Dead guy talking. Yeah, he was freaked out. He nodded, but it was a little reluctant. Admitting to that was a little like admitting to any weakness, which he wasn’t fond of doing.

Frank snorted and walked forwards. “Good. You should be – you’re the one that killed me, jackass.”

“Hey, that was a - ”

“A mistake?” Frank finished for him, and that was probably a poor excuse for killing someone. It was the only one he had, though, so he’d hide behind it. “Yeah, I know. And I don’t blame you. I should’ve known to pay my debts.”

That made Sawyer’s skin crawl, because you weren’t supposed to just accept death like that. You were supposed to kick and scream and refuse to go. He’d _murdered_ this guy. Shot him in chest, watched him die. Surely there should have been some resentment or denial or something.

But, seeing as there wasn’t, Sawyer just shrugged. “I guess.”

“There’s no need to _agree_ with me, James.”

Sawyer’s shoulder tensed, because that name was almost a swear word to him now. It belonged to someone else, someone in another world from him. Someone whose parents hadn’t been screwed over by a con man, someone who hadn’t screwed hundreds of other couples over in the same way – someone who wasn’t a murderer.

That definitely wasn’t him, not any more. He’d given Frank that name, when he met him, because it had needed to be real. The fact that ‘Frank Sawyer’ would’ve recognised his own name being thrown back at him had been part of that decision.

Now Frank just smirked and rocked back on his heels, putting his hands into the pockets of the black trousers he was wearing. Sawyer scowled at him.

“Hey, kid, no need to get defensive. I know you don’t like that name. ‘Sawyer’. That’s what you call yourself now.”

“How’d you know that?” Sawyer was just getting tenser with every single word Frank said. It made him long for the way that the silence and the plain white around him had been driving him crazy. At least then he’d been in control.

“I know everything about you. That letter you read got me curious – had to look into it once I got here, once I had some free time.” Frank paused and shrugged. “Well. Got my guide to look into it for me, actually. She’s a cute kid. Claire. Says she’s pregnant on the outside.” Okay. Talking about pregnant guides was better than talking about himself, wasn’t it? “What about you?”

“You’re asking if I’m pregnant?” No, Sawyer knew that he almost definitely wasn’t asking that, but he didn’t feel like answering any questions about himself. “I shoot you in the head or something? Sounds like your brain’s missing.”

“No, you dumb kid.” If Frank called him ‘kid’ again, Sawyer was going to find a way to rekill him. ‘Kid’ was almost as bad as ‘James’. Almost. “Your guide. What’s she like?”

“He.”

“He?” Frank raised an eyebrow, and glanced over him sceptically. He looked a little on edge, and Sawyer really didn’t like that look he was giving him right now. “Wait a second. Are you…” He waved vaguely at Sawyer’s groin, while taking great pains not to actually look down there.

“What’re you trying to say?” Sawyer snapped, arms crossing over his chest while being tempted to cup himself just to be protected from Frank’s gesturing hand. The way he was waving that thing, he could probably cut right through steel.

Frank took a few away and shrugged, trying to seem completely innocent. That might have worked if he was an eight year old with pig-tails (or Charlie, but Sawyer wasn’t likely to say that out loud). “They usually hand you out someone pretty. Y’know, to take the sting out of death. That’s the idea, anyhow.”

“Well, yeah. He’s alright to look at. In a goofy way.” Yeah, just about as goofy as Sawyer’s smile right now. He looked down and glared at the floor in an attempt to make it go away. “I pissed him off, though.”

Frank chuckled. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing,” Sawyer snapped immediately, unwilling to accept the fact that there was a slightest possibility that he might have been in the wrong. Frank looked at him with calm blue eyes. “Alright, maybe something. Nothing big, though. And he just went and took off. Haven’t seen him since.”

“You must’ve screwed up big time then,” Frank said. Sawyer looked ready to punch him, but Frank shrugged and didn’t seem at all apologetic. “He shouldn’t have left at all. It’s against the rules.”

Sawyer snorted. “He doesn’t give a damn ‘bout the rules.” Not these ones, and apparently not society’s ones either if that little display with his brother had been any indication. Damn. He was going to get hard again thinking about that, and he really didn’t want to when Frank was standing there in his grubby apron. “I don’t get it, though. He said this whole gig was a part time thing, but we’ve been here for days. Doesn’t make sense, unless he’s in a coma.”

Shit. Was Charlie in a coma? He hadn’t _said_ anything, but how’d you slip that little nugget into conversation? Still, knowing Charlie, he’d manage.

Frank hit the back of his head, even though he had to stretch up in order to be able to reach. “Don’t be an idiot.” God, this guy really wanted to spend the rest of his afterlife in the dead version of a hospital, didn’t he? “Use your head – you really think time runs the same here as it does on the outside?”

“Well why _wouldn’t_ it?”

“Because this is the afterlife, James. Doesn’t take a genius to work that out.”

Before Sawyer could raise a fist to shut Frank up – even though, while he was reluctant to admit it, after he’d murdered the guy Frank probably had a right to be a little bitchy. Just because he had the right didn’t mean he had to use it – a girl with long blonde hair faded in out of nowhere. Another guide, he’d guess, and unless Charlie had mysteriously transformed into a woman while he was gone, this was Frank’s guide – Claire.

“Frank? We should get going. Are you -- ” She cut herself off and glanced around when she saw Sawyer, before smiling nervously. Now _that_ was what an angel was supposed to look like – pale skin and long flowing hair and an innocent look about her. “Heya. You must be James, right?”

“Sawyer.”

Frank rolled his eyes. “Ignore him. It’s James.”

“Oh.” Claire frowned and looked like they’d lost her at some point. Sawyer’d blame Frank entirely for that. Asshole. Suddenly, he wasn’t feeling so guilty any more for shooting him. Claire rubbed at her forehead. “That’s confusing. I’m just Claire – that’s pretty easy, I think. No aliases for me.” Sawyer wasn’t amused, even though she sort of reminded him of Charlie already. Just a leggier, female version.

She diverted his thoughts pretty quickly. “Where’s Charlie? I thought you were his?”

“I was.” He frowned at the wording, and just hoped that that was some more weird Guide Slang like ‘flipping’. He didn’t particularly like the idea of belonging to anyone any time soon, thanks. “’til I pissed him off.”

Claire’s eyes widened. “And he just left?”

“Well he ain’t here now, is he, sweetheart?” Sawyer grinned, dimples showing, but they didn’t seem to be working seeing as Claire still looked shocked and like she was possibly considering slapping him. He let the grin drop.

Claire glanced around again, as if expecting Charlie to randomly appear out of nowhere. Sawyer had been looking around and waiting for that for a damn long time, so if it happened now that Claire looked once he was going to be pissed.

Luckily for the other two there with him, he didn’t have to explode with anger because Charlie stayed gone. Claire sighed. “The two of you, come on. We’d better go and find him.” She placed a hand on his arm and then linked hands with Frank – who grinned a little too happily for Sawyer’s liking – and everything flashed white.

* * *

You’d think that the afterlife would be organised – that they might have phones or beepers or fucking carrier pigeons or something, in case you needed to hunt someone down. But, nope. Claire checked everywhere.

Manually.

They flipped in and out of various memories, which allowed Sawyer to get a half-second peep of a few different places before Claire would state Charlie wasn’t there and move them on in another flash of white. Sawyer was surprised that he wasn’t blinded yet.

They flashed through a church, a park, a crowded bar, a richly decorated apartment, a not-so-richly decorated house, and that was when Sawyer closed his eyes because he really didn’t want to end up with motion sickness.

When he was considering having to tell Claire to stop so that he could run off and vomit – and it really wasn’t fair that you could fall sick in the afterlife – she stopped moving and let go of his arm. There was a thump as Frank plonked himself down on the sand, holding his stomach and groaning.

Sawyer looked around, taking his surroundings in. Tall tropical trees with dark green leaves, lining a perfectly clean sandy beach. Blue waves lapped at the shore and—

There was Charlie, sitting on the edge of the beach, where the sea was tickling his bare feet every time it swelled. He was staring out at the horizon, face deadly serious, and Sawyer wanted to walk over to him, sit down, and sling an arm around his shoulders. Then he’d gently kiss his cheek and then stroke over the skin and slight stubble there and then apologise.

And then Charlie would grin and say he loved him and they’d live Happily Ever After. Fucking hell, when did he start thinking like a romance novel?

“I’m going to go talk to him. You two stay here – no moving. Okay?” Claire took a step backwards down the beach towards Charlie, but she didn’t turn around until she got a reluctant nod from Sawyer.

He sat down next to Frank, who luckily didn’t talk and just groaned. As long as he didn’t throw up on Sawyer, they were fine. Sawyer’s own sickness had faded, because he was focused enough on Claire and Charlie not to care about it any more.

They were sitting side-by-side, Charlie’s head resting on Claire’s shoulder. From this distance, Sawyer couldn’t hear what they were saying and he wasn’t _that_ good at lip-reading.

Screw it. He stood up and headed over there, sitting himself down on the opposite side of Charlie to Claire. He tried to ignore the annoyed look that Claire gave him, and also the way that his feet and trousers were getting wet from the sea.

There was a heavy pause, as Charlie lifted his head from Claire’s shoulder and looked towards him. He looked upset, but he hadn’t been crying. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he just seemed faintly pissed off. Still.

Sawyer looked down and coughed. “What’s this place?” Sun, sea, sand. He was surprised that there weren’t a dozen or so holiday resorts positioned along the beach.

“An island,” Charlie said, and his voice sounded slightly hoarse so Sawyer wondered if he ought to re-evaluate his idea that Charlie hadn’t been crying.

Instead he just rolled his eyes, and was slightly satisfied when Claire patted Charlie’s knee once before standing up and retreating back to Frank. Good. He hadn’t liked how touchy they’d been together. “I know that, you jerk. Where _about_ is the island?”

He didn’t even care, he just wanted to hear Charlie talking and not hating him.

“Your future. My future. Something like that.”

Well.

That was vague.

“You’re not making sense.”

“I rarely do. It’s a talent.”

“It’s a crap one. Try for me?”

Charlie sighed and looked away from him, back out to the horizon. “This is…” Alright. That wasn’t as helpful as it could be. “If you don’t die, this is where you’ll be. Tomorrow. We both end up here tomorrow.”

“How’s that work?”

“Flight 815. It’s gonna crash.”

“So?” Sawyer needed to become telepathic, just so that he could understand Charlie’s thought patterns. When talking, Charlie assumed that you were making the same connections as he was, that you were thinking along the exact same lines.

Unfortunately, Charlie’s mind worked in an entirely unique way, so Sawyer was lost. “I’m not getting on a plane.”

“You will. You beat up the Australian ambassador or…someone. He had a tie on. It was really ugly. But it was pretty dumb of you anyway.”

“How’s me beating up some wise-ass jerk – who probably had it coming – lead to this island?”

“It just… _does_.” Charlie ran a hand through his hair and tugged at the strands. Sawyer’s eyes traced the movement, hungrily. “Look, I can’t explain it, alright? Can I just…” The hand in his hair moved to grab Sawyer’s instead.

 _“Could you keep the damn noise down?” A voice asks to his left; Sawyer’s not in the mood – he just killed the wrong guy, the wrong fucking guy, an innocent man, fuck he was a murderer and it was all for nothing, all for Hibbs, all for fucking Hibbs – so he stands up and head butts the man as hard as he can._

*

The plane shakes and the noise is deafening, deadening, destroying. Air mask on, Sawyer breathes as deeply as he can because like hell is he going to die up here, on a goddamn plane surrounded by strangers. He’s got a letter to deliver, in an eight-year-old’s hand writing and he can’t die until the real Sawyer has received his four bullets to the chest.

*

Standing in between all of the wreckage, fire and smoke and panic all around. There’s a blonde chick screaming her head off a little in the distance, and a doctor with a buzz-cut running around like he knows what he’s doing. Then there’s a dazed guy, British accent and a cute ass, taking a cigarette and that’s the start of something, isn’t it, the flicker of a connection passing between them with that one smoke.

*

Running up the beach with Charlie following him, carrying a baby and insisting he talks to it. He scowls and pouts and pretends he hates it, but he digs out one of his magazines and reads it anyway, secretly delighted with the attention.

*

Stumbling back into camp with Kate, supporting each other, Jack left behind. They won’t speak about what happened – the Others and cages and Henry fucking Gale – but Charlie’s there to help him lie down, to clean up his wounds because they’ve lost their doctor, to gently kiss his forehead and promise that things are going to be okay.

*

Sitting on the beach and they’re older now, years have passed and this is home now. They sit by the fire together, shrouded by the darkness, and giggle and laugh and tease Hurley together, until everyone else disappears and it’s just them, just the dark, just the fire, just the scared and light kiss that Charlie gives him for the first time. When Charlie pulls back and says goodnight, Sawyer notices that in the firelight his hair looks golden.

*

The sound of kids playing, random screams and yells and whoops of joy. Sawyer and Charlie, older yet, with their hair greying and beards growing and skin wrinkling; together in their hut, Sawyer reading one of the few remaining books from the hatch’s library, one of the few that didn’t get blown up, while Charlie pretends to be asleep just so that he can rest his head on Sawyer’s chest without getting bitched at to move.  


Charlie released his hand and the flood of multi-coloured images stopped. Sawyer blinked and shook his head, trying to clear it. It hadn’t hurt, but it felt like he’d just been flipped upside down and shaken a few times.

He glanced over to Charlie, once his vision stopped swimming, to see him looking off to sea again, his face tight and carefully neutral.

“All that would’ve happened if I didn’t get hit by that car?”

Charlie shook his head, and Sawyer frowned. Alright, that was just cruel, teasing him with images like that. “No. All that’s _gonna_ happen if you don’t die tonight.”

Sawyer frowned and didn’t quite get that; he’d been hit by that car, he was in the afterlife already. It seemed pretty clear that he was already dead, but Charlie was implying that he wasn’t. Fine. Sawyer wasn’t going to complain about that. Limbo was too full of drama for him to want to stick around.

Instead there was a chance of him getting out of here, getting back into the real world then promptly dropping out of the sky into a desert island. Sounded fun. Those flickering images of him and Charlie, with a baby and in firelight and with beards, were just… not what he’d ever imagined his future would look like. He stayed looking at Charlie. “You want it?”

That got Charlie’s gaze away from the skyline, towards him again. “What?”

“Do you want that? Me, you, beards?” Usually he wouldn’t bother asking. He’d just shrug and make his own decision, but he needed Charlie’s confirmation that this was a Good Thing. Charlie wasn’t giving him much, just frowning thoughtfully. “What’d you think?”

“I already knew.”

“You did? And you didn’t say anything?”

Charlie shrugged. “Didn’t really want to. Thought it’d make you decide to stay here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean… You seriously want to go back, knowing it’s me you’re going back to?”

Well, that sounded gloomy. Sawyer really didn’t like gloomy – he had enough of it in his own mind and his own life without Charlie adding to it by angsting away to himself. Idiot. “Yeah. Better you than someone else, I figure.” That was the closest Charlie was getting to a compliment for a while yet.

Charlie shook his head. “But what you saw with Liam…”

Hot high incest-y sex? Yeah, Sawyer wasn’t going to be forgetting about that for a while. Considering the fact that it had made Charlie run off, however, he could handle not actually mentioning it, for a while yet. “We don’t gotta talk about it.”

“Good.” Charlie was nodding rapidly, and staring down at his knees, and he barely looked older than twelve like that. Sawyer wondered what age he was – he couldn’t tell. With most people, he could guess to within a couple of years. Charlie seemed to defy definition. “It was dumb. And ages ago. And I… I’m gonna get clean, y’know. Honest. I will. Someday. Soon.”

Sawyer didn’t really think that they’d need to worry much about addictions if they were going to crash-land on an island, but he didn’t mention it yet. “You’d better. I ain’t gonna read goddamn magazines to some kid for a junkie.”

That won him a shaky smile. It was small and it wasn’t anything compared to the wide grins he’d got when they were just messing about in his memories, but it was still something. It faded way too fast.

“You’re sure about this? You really want to go back?”

Sawyer shoved at his shoulder, which nearly caused Charlie to fall over onto the sand. “Quit asking me that.” He meant it, too. It almost seemed like Charlie was trying to get him to change his mind.

Charlie smiled and nodded, once he’d regained his previous position from before Sawyer had pushed him over. “Okay. That’s us done then.” Before Sawyer could ask what happened now, Charlie grabbed his arm.

Everything flashed black.

* * *

He’d killed the wrong guy. Wrong guy. Hibb’s guy. Dead guy. Not his guy. Not Sawyer. Real Sawyer. Not him, he wasn’t Sawyer, he was James. James. It sounded foreign now, so distant and so wrong. Wrong guy. Dead guy.

He was staring at the rain soaked ground as he walked, barely noticing that his clothes were soaked with water. He just needed a drink. A long one. A strong one.

There was a bar across the street. He stumbled for a second, teetered at the edge of the pavement, and caught his balance. A yellow car rushed past and sprayed water from a puddle over him.

“Learn to drive, assholes,” he snarled after them, before crossing the road safely.


End file.
